Recent decades have seen a substantial evolution in discursive practices, particularly those associated with institutions, the sciences and the economy. This state of affairs has been enhanced by the appearance of digital platforms, which have made of the web a privileged access platform both for knowledge creation and knowledge dissemination in an increasingly globalized society. This scenario is also characterized by the use of English as the international language of communication, most users being non-native speakers of the language. Thus, the spread of electronic platforms as well as the use of English as a vehicle of international communication have led to the emergence of new discursive practices or the adaptation of existing ones to the digital mode.

Digital affordances, and the immediacy, visibility, and connectedness they bring along, have changed the way we communicate and project our identities. They have also changed the way we approach texts as objects of analysis.

This special issue aims to become a forum for some of the latest contributions to this topic. Proposals from different analytical approaches are welcome. These approaches might include computer-mediated discourse analysis, pragmatics, intercultural rhetoric, genre-based analysis, corpus studies or multimodality. The following topics may be addressed:

- Are digital genres in academic settings modelled on traditional genres in paper format? Or, rather, is the digital mode generating new genres? What are their rhetorical and discursive features?

- How is identity constructed and represented in digital academic discourse?

- In which ways has the use of English as a Lingua Franca in the academic world been influenced by the use of digital platforms? To what extent do culture and discipline affect the shaping of academic web-mediated discourse?

- How do verbal and visual modes interact in academic digital contexts? Which new methods of approaching discourse are needed to understand web-mediated texts?

Detailed proposals (up to 800 words) for full essays (7,500 words), as well as all inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to both editors by 31 December 2019: Rosa Lorés(rlores@unizar.es) and Giuliana Diani (giuliana.diani@unimore.it).